Thursday, February 12, 2009

No Substitute

Pumpkin adores cupcakes. When someone in her class turns two and moves up to the next room, there is usually a party, and the parents of the "graduating" toddler often bring cupcakes. On those days, I hear "I eat cupcake!" for most of the drive home, and when Hubby asks her what she did that day, she tells him all about the cupcake she ate, and how she wanted more.

Given Pumpkin's fascination with cupcakes, I thought I'd try making some muffins. I had grand schemes in my head of getting Pumpkin hooked on muffins and then using them to get her to eat some vegetables (by adding grated zucchini or carrots). I'd love it if she'd eat vegetables in their natural form, but so far the closest we've come is to have her nibble on a baby carrot and promptly spit it out.

So during her nap on Sunday, I made some muffins. She was so excited when she came out for her snack and saw them. The excitement was short-lived, though. She quickly determined that these cupcakes were sub-standard, and asked me for a "different cupcake". I felt so bad- she was so disappointed. Luckily, we still had some homemade cookies on hand, so I gave her one of those instead, and she seemed to forgive me. I also told her that those cupcakes were really muffins. She'll eat the "fuffins" for her snacks now, but she still asks hopefully for cupcakes. I may try again, with a sweeter muffin recipe. Maybe a chocolate muffin would work? I could surely hide some zucchini in there....

5 comments:

  1. That's so cute. Elli will only eat the icing off cupcakes, but will eat muffins (which makes no sense to me except that maybe after eating the icing, the rest of the cupcake is a bit boring).

    I usually make pumpkin muffins (because canned pumpkin is the easiest vegetable around) following this recipe
    http://swistle.blogspot.com/2008/11/pumpkin-chocolate-chip-muffins.html

    except with whole wheat flour. Or for less mess, I'll replace the chocolate chips with raisins or nuts, and add pumpkin pie spice (ginger, cinnamon & cloves).

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  2. Anonymous7:46 AM

    What a great story! Can't pull one over on her. I'm sure you could put zucchini in chocolate muffins (I have a great chocolate zucchini cake recipe), but I don't think there's much nutritive value to zucchini. What about carrot 'fuffins'? We've had some blueberry muffins lately made from an easy Krusteaz mix and blueberries added. I'd prefer to make homemade, with wheat flour, but we can't get our act together for that right now. The Krusteaz (gotta love that name, eh?) mix makes for a *very* sweet muffin.

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  3. Anonymous8:52 AM

    I haven't tried it, but the vegetable baby foods could probably be substituted for other liquids in most cupcake or muffin recipes.

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  4. I haven't read it, but Jerry Seinfield's wife wrote a cookbook that is based on using purees in food. You may want to check it out. A friend of mine at work has it and swears by it because her older children are picky eaters.

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  5. Livia (and her parents) love these 'Morning Glory' muffins: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Easy-Morning-Glory-Muffins/Detail.aspx. They are quite sweet, but contain lots of carrot. You can leave out the walnut if you like, although I don't think it's a choking hazard if you cut them up very finely. The only downside is the amount of time you end up grating the apple and carrots...

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